Loss as Gain

I am beginning to realize that in order to truly enjoy things in life, one must realize that they were never "theirs" to begin with. I am thinking of two examples: one about acquaintances and the other about "status". Whenever strangers meet, they treat each other as people who simply are a mystery to each other. Questions form in mind, until sooner or later discussions are completed and we officially become "acquainted". I wonder, is there any symbolic meaning in the fact that "acquaint" and "acquire" have the same prefix? They both suggest (as does the word "acquiesce") that one is taking something that was once new and making it a "given", or as something that belongs to them. Acquaintances "belong" to us insofar as they have a name we can remember, a number we can store for future reference, and a set of habits that we can expect from them from day to day. But in fact, do we really know the people we are with, or are those things we do only the habits we construct to ward off mystery and its overwhelming qualities? Could the opposite of "acquainting" simply be the fear of the unknown, spontaneous, or unpredictable? Sometimes- every so often in fact--it may be helpful for acquaintances to become strange to each other (in a figurative sense) before they can rediscover each others' intrigues.
   The second example has to do with status. "Status" is something I believe I have when I gain a reputation in a certain area, but then I wonder, is status perhaps over-rated? If a person is used to being a kind of "authority" in a community, then anyone who says something against their authority will be seen as a threat to their identity. Hence, authority gravitates toward those who uphold authority, and might even avoid those who challenge it. This is in fact, not a sign of a secure identity, but more like a sign of fragility. What happens when I am the one in the group without any recognized status whatsoever? In those cases, my strangeness to the group gives me freedom to speak out in it in ways that authority status would not allow. I can even inject new ideas into the group, because I am not the appointed "expert" who disseminates information based on the group's ideology. But there is always a downside to being a person without status, and that is, such a person is not relied upon to take care of the group or provide guidance.
   Perhaps what I am getting at is that one should never be certain that a gain is a gain and a loss is a loss. Sometimes things that seem advantageous, such as having a lot of acquaintances, can become too oblivious to the spontaneity of people's connections to each other. And sometimes status itself becomes a perceptual burden, because it prevents people from acting from a place of being able to challenge rules.